Antharion - Update #5, Game Progress

It's been a really busy last couple of days for us. Programming-wise I've been polishing the smart AI system for enemies and NPCs along with making some balancing tweaks to combat and magic. Our artist Peter has been churning out monsters like crazy and just created a female avatar body for each race. Our world designer Jen has been creating some really cool towns and dungeons which all look amazing. Everything is coming together beautifully and it's incredibly exciting!!

-- In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. Douglas AdamsA lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. Winston ChurchillSome cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go. Oscar Wilde

I am saying that 15 dollars are too much for a project looking that indy to attract a lot of people and that 15 dollars are definetly above my "impulse purchase" grade - and I'd consider that being a good thing.

We are not talking about an AAA title price like 50€ for xcom.
We are also not talking about an kickstarter project promising to be a AAA title like Wasteland 2 (15$), Project Eternity (20$) or Shadowrun Returns (15$).
Or a very promising indie kickstarter title like Xenonauts (20$) or maybe M.O.R.E. (10$).

It's about a game, where there is a slim chance that I will have fun with it for more than a couple of hours. And in this very case I would not have spent more than 10$. Of course you can argue that is all about supporting developers, but well…I got a limited amount of money to spend.

So…would you back this project with 50 bucks? And if not, why?
I mean if you want to back this project it's great and I wouldn't want to stop you. As I said, I think it looks good and it would be cool if they make it.
But I also think that having 10$ as minimum price for the game would have been a better idea.

BTW: My favorite games of this year are FTL and Avernum - and I am quite sure these are not fighting for the top places in graphical quality either (bought these on steam for 9.99€ and 7.99€ btw)

It's a neat project and I'm watching it too, but there's no need to get hostile to someone for stating a preferred lower cost for entry on this one. This game looks like a lot of work went into it and it looks like it might be fun, but $15 is a hard sell for me too, here. No offense to the developers, but that's simply how it is. If my $15 ends up being the breaking point in the last hour, I'm in. Otherwise, I'll wait for it to show up for sale, hopefully on sale. Their Kickstarter IS going well, though. I imagine they'll reach their goal and then some.

PS: And I got Avernum for $3.39. <3 Steam sales. It's regular price is $9.99, BTW. Referring to Vogel's premium pricing on his own webstore is kinda disingenuous.

It's not premium pricing, it's what he charges on his website….should I look everywhere to see if thats what he charges elsewhere?

If 15 is a breaking point for many, I'm thinking perhaps backing games might not be a wise financial decision. To me anything below 20 dollars is good, going off what the really big companies charged is a bit off putting since they know they will get enough support to offer that lower price and still make their goal.

Okay, sorry but if great games are available for next to nothing, why should anyone not play games? I paid $2 for Alpha Protocol, $5 for DA:O, $7 for Divinity 2, etc. You are being a jerk and there is no reason to be.

I dont think i've ever seen a new / pre-order PC game sold for $10, old games will always be available for $5, this game is no exception ofcourse. You're comparding apples and oranges.

-- "Since you are sharing your opinion with others you might give a false impression to those who haven't played the game yet." zahratustra shares his view why i'm not entitled to have an opinion on RPGwatch

Well, that comment was more about rune's classist little rant more than the prices of new games.

..But since you asked! Many niche-r indies launch at $10. FTL, Avernum, Hotline Miami, Rocketbirds, Wanderlust: Rebirth… there's five right there. Five recent ones, all from within the past few months. And don't pretend Avernum costs more. It is $10. Sure, a DRM free copy is $15 on GamersGate and the same DRM free copy is available on his personal webstore for even more, but that doesn't mean it's not still $10 on Steam for the exact same game.

Wasnt talking about indie games since you didnt compare prices to indie games, but old bargain bin AAA games, there's a difference. But nevermind.

Personally i would never pre-order anything if i wasnt really interested in it, that's kind of the whole idea behind KS, so i think for most people it doesnt matter if its $10 or $15. I would have backed FTL at $20 too, it wouldnt have mattered, at all.

-- "Since you are sharing your opinion with others you might give a false impression to those who haven't played the game yet." zahratustra shares his view why i'm not entitled to have an opinion on RPGwatch

If $5 makes or breaks a game purchase for you, then you may want to consider spending less time gaming/forum hopping. Obviosly your AO comes into play, but I can hardly buy a pint of decent beer for less than $5.

What some people don't get is that backing a KS isn't like browsing the Steam store hoping to find some low priced game(s). KS is a niche market. It's not like i could go onto Steam and find something almost exactly like FTL, or Anatharion for that matter.

-- "Since you are sharing your opinion with others you might give a false impression to those who haven't played the game yet." zahratustra shares his view why i'm not entitled to have an opinion on RPGwatch

Originally Posted by screeg
You realize this is utterly, completely subjective, right? On top of wildly varying financial situations, lots of people using different currencies will find $20 to be more money than you and I.

That's probably why I put to me

In niche titles it is hard to make your money back when you sell for less…especailly on kickstarter, if it was only 10 dollars to get a copy of the game I'm sure it wouldn't be at the amount it has.

Darkling, if you want to have a discussion great, if you want to name call go somewhere else.

@CrazyIrish
Of course 5$ isn't tons of money and if you are sure you get something for that, it's well spent. But on kickstarter you can hardly know whether the game releases at all and if the game will be great as you purchase it in advance.
Of course you need to take into consideration that some games would never make it to the light of day if you would not give them money in advance. But everyone has to find the balance for himself. Ultimately, as I said - if you are sure you will love it, the money is well spent.
That said, forum hopping is also a way of entertainment, otherwise we probably wouldn't write here, right? It's not like we would change much with our little discussion.

@rune_74 what you put up in the first postings wasn't much of an discussion either which was also why I stopped replying as it felt like bumping my head against a wall.
Your last posting however has a point. But it is very hard to say if it is valid or not and a lot of things influence it. Spiderweb is a good example. Their games costed like the double or so in the past when they didn't sell them on steam. Because the fan base was small but strong and paid that money. Now with having steam and a much bigger audience they could lower the price to get a lot of people buying the game who just think they could like it. I bought Avadon at first and played it for tons of hours. And as the game was great I bought their next game Avernum as well.
Now I got one friend who picked up Avadon and played it for a couple of hours but didn't like it. And I have another one who picked up Avernum, and also dropped it after a couple of hours. And if you look into the achievement stats, that's a huge part of the customers. The majority of these people probably wouldn't have bought it for 20€ or so. Spiderweb apparently made a lot of additional profit with that and did that step also with several of their old games.

On the other hand, you have got two other extremes:
Maybe you know of Dominions3, another indie? game, released in 2006. This game still costs 55$. Maybe this game appeals to almost no one, but those interested in it, have no good alternatives. For a developer it's a risky step to say "lets sell it for 10$ now and see what happens" If they don't sell more than 5 times as much now, they are in a bad position of course. Steam mitigates this quite a bit.
The second example here is Distant Worlds. This game is still for 33€+21€+21€=75€ for the game with both expansions which enhance the game immenseley as claimed in the forums. Basically the same thing. If they selled it for half the price, would they sell twice as much? Maybe, and maybe not. And if they can live with it right now, they might not see the necessity to change it. Thoug my personal guess is, that they would make a lot more money if they would sell it for half the price on steam. I am also pretty sure that steam wouldn't even allow such a high price.